Goddess of the Ice Realm (47 page)

“Next?” said the toad. “Next you try your luck against the Visitor himself, master. Unless you decide to turn and run instead.”

She laughed. “Which you won't do,” she added, “because you're very stupid, and very determined. Though it's just possible that you're even stronger than you're stupid!”

T
he
Bird of the Tide
was anchored near the harbor mouth, as far from the docks as was possible in the enclosed waters. The vessel undulated slowly as the current out of Terness Harbor tugged at the anchor line.

Commander Lusius, dressed in fur-trimmed velvet, stood
in the shadows of the quay. With him hunched three men; their clothing would've been nondescript were it not for the swords they wore.

The
Bird
was as silent as death; there was no sound from aboard her save the creak of the line working against the scuttle as she moved. A lantern hung from the mast, arm's length below the furled sail. It guttured on the last of its oil, but the faint glow showed what the men on the dock wanted to see.

One of the vessel's crewmen sprawled in the bow with an arm over the railing. Three more lay amidships; two on their backs, the other facedown. The man who'd begun the night on watch leaned against the sternpost, utterly motionless. The woman's legs stuck out of the small deckhouse; she hadn't moved either.

“There's two I don't see,” muttered one of the nondescript men. “And the fellow from the merchantman, he must be aboard too.”

“They're in the hold, Rincip,” Lusius growled. “The supercargo is, at any rate. And they're just as dead as the others. The poison doesn't care whether you can see the bodies or not.”

“Let's get it over with,” muttered another of the men as he climbed into the skiff tied to the stern of the nearest fishing vessel. “The moon'll be up in an hour. I don't want an audience of rube fishermen while I send corpses to the bottom of the harbor with their bellies filled with ballast.”

“Yeah, all right,” said Rincip. He and the third Sea Guard boarded the skiff and unshipped the oars. Lusius watched with his arms folded across his chest as his men rowed toward the
Bird of the Tide.

The harbor was quiet. The fishermen couldn't rake belemnites from the shoals during darkness, and nothing about Terness—neither the Commander and his men, nor the Rua who now ruled the region's skies—encouraged simple folk to be out at night. The water carried the slight thump of the skiff touching the larger vessel's side to where Lusius stood.

Two of the Sea Guards gripped the
Bird's
gunwale while the other scrambled aboard carrying the painter. He looped it to the rail. Rincip had just followed his man over the railing
when the woman in the deckhouse sat up. There was a shimmer in the dim light; Rincip squawked and jerked forward, clawing at his neck.

The vessel's crewmen were all moving—fast. The Sea Guard on deck got his hand to his sword hilt before the captain made a quick swipe with his own slim blade. Lusius swore as the Guard toppled backward over the rail in a spray of blood. His head hit the water some distance from the rest of the body.

“Don't or I'll—” the
Bird's
bosun shouted as the Sea Guard in the skiff tried to cut the painter with his sword. The rest of the sentence probably would've been “—kill you!” but he didn't bother finishing it after he thrust down with a boarding pike.

The Sea Guard went over the side and sank as soon as the bosun managed to jerk his pike free. The two-handed stroke had driven the spearhead the length of a tall man's forearm through the Guard's chest cavity.

Lusius swore in a monotone as he ran back toward the castle, trying to stay in the shadows. Oars scraped and squealed as the
Bird of the Tide
got underway.

He'd almost shouted to rouse the tower watch, but he caught himself in time. He'd seen what Captain Chalcus could do with a dagger and now a sword. Lusius didn't intend to prove with his own body that the fellow was just as skilled with a bow.

And besides, there was a better way to deal with Prince Garric's spies. . . .

The faces of men, each announcing his own name, jostled one another through Garric's mind as he lay in bed. He was tired, desperately tired, but he couldn't sleep because the literal army of men he'd met and inspected today wouldn't let him.

“It's part of the job, lad,”
Carus said in his mind.
“Just like going over tax assessments is part of the job; though that one I never could do, not even to keep my officials honest.”

Iron clanged against stone in the garden below. Garric tensed, ready to leap for the sword hanging from the rack by
the bed; glad at a chance for action but so tired that he was afraid he'd stumble over his own feet.

A soldier cursed; his officer snarled him to silence. Garric relaxed with a smile. A guard had dropped his spear; Prince Garric wasn't the only tired person awake tonight in the palace.

Smiling, Garric dropped off into the sleep that frustration had denied him. When he realized that the dream had him again, it was too late to rouse himself . . . and he was so tired, he might not have wanted to return to that restless consciousness anyway.

He was in the garden as before. The moon must have been full; branches stood out against the sky even though it was drizzling. The air was cooler than on the previous times he'd been dragged into this place, though the blossoming pear trees meant it must be late spring.

Carus wasn't with him. Garric was alone on a dank, chill night, and something waited for him beside the altar at the back of the garden. He walked forward because he
had
to: the great figures beyond the sky were again forcing him to.

The compulsion wasn't necessary. There was no place to flee in this dream and besides—Garric was the descendent and successor of King Carus, the greatest warrior the Isles had ever known. He wasn't going to run from the thing that rose onto its hind legs and snarled at his approach.

He couldn't get a good look at the creature. The diffused light hid as much as it displayed, but Garric also had the awareness that things didn't always stay the same even while he looked at them.

The creature had a bestial head with great tusks jutting from the upper and lower jaws, but except for a bristly mane down the middle of the back its body was as hairless as a man's. It had short legs and a long, broad torso; on its hind legs it stood as tall as Garric. Its arms were half again the length of his own.

Garric had been looking for a weapon from the moment he realized the situation. He saw fallen branches, but they were probably rotten and wouldn't be effective clubs against so large a creature anyway.

The ape growled. He was going to call it an ape, though
part of Garric's mind feared that it was nothing of the sort.

The ape gave a rasping bellow and hunched onto the knuckles of its hands. Other beasts watched and waited in shadowed corners of the garden. They chittered quietly among themselves.

Garric grabbed the edge of a stone planter that roots had fractured. The ape grunted explosively and lunged forward. The slab resisted; the weight of dirt held it where it was. Garric screamed in frustration and tore the piece free, bringing it around in both hands. As the ape dug its clawed fingers into his shoulders, he smashed the stone into three fragments against its forehead.

The beast flung Garric away with a started cry. His right thigh slammed the trunk of pear tree, a numbing blow.

He got up, using his hands and left leg to raise his body. His right leg was barely able to hold him upright, but he didn't think the bone was broken. The ape staggered backward, apparently dazed. It patted doubtfully at its forehead with its left hand. The pressure cut was bleeding freely; blood dripped from the deep brow ridges.

The fractured planter lay between Garric and the ape. He might have been able to lift the stone shell, three-quarters of the original object, if he had time to empty the dirt from it. He doubted the ape would give him the time, and anyway he wasn't sure his leg was up to walking just yet. Much as he'd have liked to charge while the ape seemed dizzy, he guessed he was going to wait for it to come to him.

The ape rose onto its hind legs. It stared at its great left hand, black with blood in the moonlight, and gave another snarling roar.

Garric seized the branch above him, then jerked down with all his strength. The brittle pear wood broke where the limb met the trunk. As the ape charged, Garric brought the long branch around as a spear tipped with jagged splinters.

He meant to thrust it into the ape's throat, but the long crooked brush of twigs and blossoms tangled in the branch above and fouled his stroke. The ragged tip gouged the beast's shoulder as its clawed hands closed on Garric's neck. He drove both bare heels into the ape's belly, but it was like kicking an oak.

The beast raised him overhead. Garric's vision blurred and turned red. He tried to pull the ape's hands apart, but he wasn't sure his fingers were gripping. The ape swung him like a flail into the pear tree. He felt his ribs crack.

Red shifted toward blackness and the world went dark. Garric felt himself moving again. He was vaguely aware of another shock; then it was over, except for pain beyond anything he'd ever imagined.

He woke up in his bed.

Liane breathed softly beside him; sleeping dreamlessly or dreaming ordinary human dreams. Garric grinned despite himself; his heart was hammering and all his muscles were tense, but this time he hadn't leaped out of bed with a shout. His mind hadn't expected him to be able to move after all the bones of his torso had shattered against a tree trunk.

“Now that was a hard one, lad,”
Carus murmured. The image of the ancient king was the same as always, dressed in trousers and tunic with a long sword at his side; the way he'd generally been when he went about the business of government.
“They're trying to break us to their will, I'd guess. Make us say we'll serve them.”

I won't,
thought Garric. His hands gently explored his rib cage and right thigh as he convinced himself that he wasn't really a cripple dying in agony.
No matter how often they kill me.

But a part at the back of his mind wondered how much longer this could go on without affecting him, no matter how brave he was consciously.

I fought an ape,
he thought.
It beat me to death against a tree. Was it the same with you?

Carus smiled.
“It was an ape, I guess,”
he said.
“But I killed it instead of the other way round.”

How?
thought Garric, touching the medal he wore on a neck thong. It had been struck for the coronation of King Carus; he wore it at all times.
I mean—were we in the same body? Or did you have a weapon?

The ancient king's smile became rueful.
“A weapon?”
he said.
“Not exactly, lad. You see
. . .”

He paused, smiling again in real embarrassment.
“You see,”
Carus went on,
“I've been places that you haven't been.
I tore the thing's throat out with my teeth. I don't have much recollection of it while it was happening, but . . . it wasn't the first time it'd happened to me, lad. And the other time it wasn't a beast's throat when my sword had broken.”

I see,
thought Garric.
Well, your highness, I'm glad the Good has folk like you to defend it.

He breathed deeply, then added,
Maybe between us we can arrange that other people don't have to learn how to fight monsters without weapons.

Liane awoke to Garric's laughter. She turned to him with a warm smile.

Sharina sat wrapped in the fur of some large animal she didn't recognize, drinking mulled wine and looking down into the waters of the fjord. She didn't want much in her stomach before she dived, but the warmer she started out, the longer she'd be able to continue.

Neal had supplied both the fur and the hot drink. He appeared to be the generally accepted leader while Alfdan recovered from the strain of his art.

The band's driftwood fire crackled with flashing enthusiasm. Rainbow-colored flames spurted whenever heat opened a pocket of sea salt. Franca and especially Scoggin, sitting on opposite sides of her, glanced nervously at the blaze. They'd survived the decade of Her rule by creeping through the shadows. They saw an open fire as a frightening beacon drawing in terrors, known and unknown.

“I suppose they know what they're doing,” Sharina said to the men;
her
men, beside but not part of the wizard's band, the way oil lies on water. “Alfdan's protected them so far.”

“Alfdan isn't protecting them now,” Scoggin muttered, glancing sourly toward where the wizard lay on a bed of furs. He was beginning to stir: Layson helped him sit upright while another man waited with a mug of soup. It'd be some time before he was ready to use his art again, though.

Some of the men had tied driftwood into a raft using ropes from their stores. It was a clumsy-looking thing and didn't have a real deck, but it'd do as a fishing float . . . or a diving platform.

“There's nothing on land here to fear,” Beard said. “Anyway, they have me and my mistress, don't they?”

“What about the water, axe?” Franca said. “That's where Mistress Sharina has to go, isn't it?”

“There are things in the fjord,” the axe said. “But the mistress will have Beard, so the danger will be greater for the other things. If they come to the mistress and Beard, there will be
so
much blood!”

Sharina wasn't clear on how useful an axe would be under water, but Beard's enthusiasm seemed genuine and he was the expert in killing things. She grinned. Everybody ought to have a talent. . . .